The control theory manager : combining the control theory of William Glasser with the wisdom of W. Edwards Deming to explain both what quality is and what lead-managers do to achieve it / William Glasser.

By: Glasser, William, 1925-.

Material type: materialTypeLabel

BookPublisher: New York : HarperBusiness, 1994Description: xiii,123 p. ; 23 cm.ISBN: 088730673X.Subject(s): Management

| Control theory

| Quality of products

DDC classification: 658.4013

Contents:

Part One: Managing for quality -- The reason for this book -- Lead-management is the basic reform we need -- Explanations and definitions -- The ways we relate to each other -- Part Two: Control theory -- All we do is behave and all significant behavior is chosen -- All behavior is total behavior -- The quality world -- What actually starts our behavior and the cause of our creativity -- Part Three: Putting it all together -- Introduction -- Criticism -- Supervising noncoercively -- Solving problems with counseling -- Summing it up.

Holdings
Item type	Current library	Call number	Copy number	Status	Date due	Barcode	Item holds
General Lending	MTU Bishopstown Library Lending	658.4013 (Browse shelf(Opens below))	1	Available		00015129

Total holds: 0

Excerpt provided by Syndetics

Managing for Quality Based on their common sense, almost all American managers are so convinced that they "know" why the people they manage behave the way they do that it never occurs to them that they could be wrong. This is why so many of them are puzzled. Managing workers with what they have "known" all their lives is not leading to the quality work they know their companies need to achieve to be competitive . That many companies are failing to achieve quality is painfully apparent. Their previous customers are buying what they believe are better foreign products, most of them made in Japan. More than any other reason, these products are better because foreign workers, especially Japanese workers, are managed much more effectively than we manage ours. Led by Deming, the Japanese have broken with common sense to embrace a management system, lead-management, that consistently produces quality. Americans continue to use boss-management, a traditional system that has always produced a lot of work and was quite competitive as long as everyone used it and no one's products were significantly better than anyone else's. In the next three chapters, I will describe both systems in detail. But managers need more than a description; they need a clear understanding of why lead-management produces quality and boss-management does not. Control theory, a new explanation of how we behave, supplies that understanding, and in this book I will strongly recommend that all managers learn to use this theory. Workers who are managed by people who use control theory will consistently do quality work at a competitive cost. Part Two of this book will be devoted to a detailed explanation of this new theory. It is only fair to warn readers that control theory is neither easy to accept nor to learn because we have to give up the common sense, stimulus-response (S-R), carrot-and-stick psychology that most of us have been using all our lives. We cling to this ancient psychologyeven though some of its flaws are fairly obvious because, until the very recent introduction of control theory, there was nothing to replace it. Control theory, in a form that is understandable and usable, has only been around since the early 1980s. Still, its acceptance is growing rapidly and my experience, as one of the leaders in teaching this theory, is that people who read what I write with an open mind find it to be so sensible and usable that many of them are already trying to give up bossing and start leading. I also believe that the present stubborn, economic recession is a result of the significant improvement in the quality of the products that the Japanese, and others who have learned from Deming, have made available to consumers. After using these products for more than twenty years, almost everyone now wants-and even demands-quality; huge numbers of people have decided that it is not available in many domestic products. This is new. Prior to what Japan has accomplished in the past quarter century, only the wealthy had access to quality products. The middle class, who make up the bulk of the world's consumers, could only see them in movies or glimpse them when the wealthy drove by. Now they can own them and the desire to accept nothing less has become contagious. In search of quality, billions of our dollars go overseas. Quality has now escaped from Pandora's box; shoddy is disappearing all over the world. To achieve quality, lead-managers, using the concepts of control theory, embrace the following two procedures that rarely ever occur to boss-managers: 1.Learn what quality actually is, teach it to all who work in the organization, and then listen carefully to any worker who has an idea of how it may be further improved. 2.Manage everyone in the organization so that it is obvious to all workers that it is to their benefit to settle for nothing less than quality work. This book focuses on managing people. It does not deal with nonhuman issues such as statistics, flow charts, finances or high technology. While these proceduresare obviously essential to managing a successful business, companies are not failing because they lack this technical knowledge: their failure is with people. We seem unable to learn that workers will not do high-quality work much more because of the way boss-managers treat them than because they do not understand the technical or statistical aspects of what they are asked to do. While this book is addressed to all managers, it is primarily directed to commercial managers who need to learn to manage workers so that what they produce can be sold for a profit. The amount of profit, however, will also depend on the company's ability to convince customers to buy. The surest way to do this is to produce quality products and to render quality service. Advertising is important, but no matter how convincing it may be, if it promises more quality than the product delivers, disappointed customers will stop buying and may never buy again. It is quality at a fair price far more than advertising that determines long-term profitability. I, along with many others, accept that W. Edwards Deming is a pioneer in the field of managing workers so that they produce quality work at a competitive cost. I assume that readers are familiar with his basic ideas, so I restate them here only to support my thesis: a working knowledge of control theory is necessary if we are to significantly increase our practice of what Deming teaches. It is well known that his success has been mostly in Japan, and that success has occurred because the Japanese have accepted his psychology even though he fails to explain it to the extent it is explained by control theory. Deming talks extensively about the need to understand psychology and points out clearly that he believes human beings are intrinsically, rather than extrinsically, motivated. In doing so, he shows that he understands the basic premise of control theory. In my experience, we will not convince American managers to embrace Deming's ideas until we expose them to the complete theory of intrinsic motivation: control theory. That American managers, even those who use Deming as a consultant, have been largely unable to duplicate the Japanese success is well documented in Andrea Gabor's 1990 book, The Man Who Brought Quality to America . From Ms. Gabor's book, it is apparent that Deming's argument for intrinsic motivation is not strong enough to convince most American managers to stop bossing and to start leading. Control theory supplies the convincing argument for lead-management that Deming does not provide. For example, in point eight of his fourteen points for management, Deming tells managers that in their dealings with workers they should "drive out fear." But as Ms. Gabor tells her story, it is clear that none of the three companies she writes about (Xerox, Ford, and General Motors) are willing to do this to the extent that Deming claims, and control theory explains, it must be done. This is because the people at the top of these companies, much as those at the top of most American companies, believe that fear is an important motivator. They have believed this all their lives and they are not about to stop because an expert, even as successful an expert as Deming, tells them it is wrong. Control theory explains clearly why workers who are not fearful do quality work. And, the more they are treated in need-satisfying ways, the more willingly and joyfully they apply themselves, further increasing the quality of their work. More than most management consultants, Deming talks a lot about joy in work, but few bosses seem to hear this part of what he has to say. What the Japanese did when they moved to lead-managing without knowing the underlying theory was unusual. It may have been because of their desperate effort to get their economy going after the destruction of World War II opened their minds to new ideas, but more likely it was because of their culture. They are much more willing than Americans to listen to people who they are told are experts, and Deming is one of the experts they were told to listen to. I am not saying that this is always good or that our culture's lack of faith in experts is bad. All I am saying is that, in the case of Deming, this acceptance worked very well for them. He was introduced to them as an expert by officials in the MacArthur government and, because they revered MacArthur, they were willing to listen and to try what he suggested. What he advised them to do worked so well that they have continued to listen even if they still may not understand exactly why his advice works. (Continues...) Excerpted from The Control Theory Manager by William Glasser Copyright © 2003 by William Glasser Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

William Glasser, who was born in Cleveland, Ohio, first earned a degree in chemical engineering from the then Case Institute of Technology and later became a psychiatrist. He found himself doubting much of the conventional psychoanalysis, in which often the patient is seen as the helpless victim of past traumas, and insisted that the cobwebs of the past be brushed aside and that the patient develop a plan of action for the future. Glasser's conviction that success breeds success and that failure breeds failure led him to develop his reality therapy, a remedy for people for whom conventional psychotherapy does not work and a prescription of use to people regardless of their circumstances. Glasser has also done much for and within the school system, dealing with the issues of motivation, quality in the school, and problems of delinquency.

Glasser's books have been translated into many languages. He has wide experience as a psychiatrist in Los Angeles and has been a consultant to the school system there.

(Bowker Author Biography)